New Arrival – Meet Clarise

Yesterday, while feeding in the morning I noticed one of our ewes, Bea, talking whole lot and not really eating; though she’d nibble a little here and there.  That sort of behavior can usually be a sure sign that babies are coming soon.  The ewes tend to “call” to the babies that are about to make their arrival, as if to coax them out.  I also noticed while driving in and out the driveway various times during the day (normal occurance for me) that Bea would be lying down next to one of her yearling daughters.  If the daughter moved, she’d yell at them and move to follow, sniffing them as if to scold and then lay down again.

So since I prefer to have lambs out in the pasture, that’s where I found little Clarise, dried and happy.  The sun was shining and it was warm.  I was surprised to only find one ewe lamb as her mama has consistently given us twins, usually two boys or two girls never one of each.  But I suspect that Bea is getting up in years as she’s one of the original sheep we got in our package deal of Jacob sheep.

The interesting thing about Clarise’s mama is that she doesn’t have any horns.  When we first got them from the man that used to raise them I suspected that he burned her horns off as a lamb; I really wouldn’t doubt it actually.  He would be the type to poll the sheep because they’d get stuck in the fence or some such reason.  But since then, I have heard that there are flocks of Jacob sheep throughout the U.S. that do have a polled Jacob here and there.  So I’m not sure what Bea’s reason is but I do know she is a consistent producer of beautiful babies.  She’s usually given us ram lambs so they’ve been in the freezer but they have been consistently gorgeous rams, normally four horned.

Clarise and I know that Bea will never be registerable but that’s fine with us because we’re sure that Clarise will be able to stand on her own merits.

Just like her sister Ella shown above who shows the beautiful horns that Bea has given us on all her babies.

So there’s one of my “skeletons” that have been in the Mud Ranch pasture closet; unless you come visit us of course.  Then you’d see.